


Somewhere Out There

by jazzypizzaz



Series: soulmate AU [1]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Episode: s02e08 Necessary Evil, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, mostly indulgent ship feels, some world-building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 10:31:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12680085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzypizzaz/pseuds/jazzypizzaz
Summary: "I'm looking for the proprietor of this establishment.""Does he owe you money?"In a universe where soulmates' first words are written on the other's arm, what kind of expectations might Quark and Odo have built up around these sentences?





	Somewhere Out There

**“I’m looking for the proprietor of this establishment.”**

 

Quark had pretty much given up on his soulmark, or at least to anyone who would ask.  They weren’t all that common on Ferenginar anyway, and those that did have them often kept them hidden or ignored.  

 

Of course, his parents and brother were set on being  _ different _ .  Like Quark, they all had soulmarks.  In their foolishness however, unlike Quark, they never shied away from showing theirs off, musing openly about true love, as if it were a real thing.  As if it were more important than (gasp!) profit or financial success.  No matter how many deals his father bungled, or how improperly forthright his mother was, nothing calmed a fight between them faster than repeating their first words to each other, as if to remind each other that their bond was a bigger priority than either financial success or female submission.  

 

Twisted, deviant, immoral.

 

(His brother was no better -- tracing over the simple “hey there!” in alien script, clearly fascinated that his soulmate was an exotic  _ off-worlder _ .  Quark at least had the good sense to keep his Kardasi-printed words covered from view.)

 

And what did Quark’s own mark imply about himself, in this regard?  On the one hand, Quark spent many a night -- in between finishing his accounting homework and bailing Rom out of being swindled by schoolyard bullies -- dreaming that maybe  _ just maybe _ the proprietor of the words marked on his arm meant  _ himself _ .  That one day he could be his own boss, turning a profit with some luxury business that he owns outright.  A spa maybe.  Or a theme park.  Something suitably impressive to both delicate-lobed females and deep-pocketed investors.

 

Of course, according to the words Quark might instead be an underpaid employee, being sent by a difficult customer to find an overbearing manager who pockets half his wages (as would be only proper).  

 

But for some stupidly optimistic reason, Quark, with a knowing tingle in his lobes, didn’t think so.

 

On the other hand, the directness of the speaker that his soulmark words implied was worrisome.  A proper female wouldn’t be  _ looking _ for anyone herself.  She wouldn’t even BE in a public establishment, away from home and her male chaperone, let alone demanding to see anyone in position of power!

 

And so, from the very beginning, Quark’s own sense of romance was poisoned by knowing that even his soulmate would be tarnished by impropriety.

 

Slinging tube grubs on the freighter, after his fall from grace on Ferenginar, Quark had almost forgotten about those childhood dreams... until like a shining beacon of opportunity from the Grand Exchequer himself, a vacant shopfront space on an alien hunk of metal in the middle of nowhere presented itself to him.

 

_ A bar _ , Quark had thought to himself, his eyes wide with visions of dancing latinum strips.   _ No, not just a bar with drinks and food, but gambling too!  Holosuites and dabo girls and an atmosphere of welcome respite that might induce many a weary Cardassian officer to part with his stipend _ .

Not to mention, perhaps, his soulmate.

 

Quark ingratiated himself to the Cardassians in charge, rented the space, bought dabo tables and cases of kanar, and dug himself into a deep pit of debt.

 

Into a deep pit of  _ investment _ , he would remind himself.  Investment in riches to come, investment in his future, and his brother’s.  

 

And maybe, just maybe, the true love he wouldn’t admit to anyone, least of all himself, that he had been dreaming of all along.

 

\----------

 

**“Does he owe you money?”**

 

Not having one for most of his life was the least of the reasons Odo couldn’t care less about soulmarks.  They were only one of a long list of things Odo didn’t care about, including romance, money, and any number of other frivolous humanoid concerns.

 

Dr. Mora would say that Odo didn’t care about anything, that he didn’t have the warmth or passion or drive necessary for love that humanoids do.  That Odo’s heart was as cold and empty as the glass beaker waiting on the table for Odo to pour himself into.

 

Odo wasn’t so sure about that.  Dr Mora might be right, but that didn’t make Odo despise him any less.  And Odo sure would never admit his own insecurities on the matter.

 

Nonetheless, from an early stage, lessons about humanoid culture (including soulmarks) were among the few desperate scraps of information Odo was able to soak up about the outside world, while isolated in Dr Mora’s lab.

 

“Some cultures, like some antiquated sects of Bajorans, view anyone lacking a soulmark as also lacking a soul,” Dr Mora would lecture, almost to himself, while recording physical stats as Odo shapeshifted along with that day’s series of tests.  “The idea being that soulmarks are a type of personal prophecy, a clue from the Prophets about what -- about  _ who _ \-- your future might contain.”  

 

From cube to sphere, stool to beaker -- and, eventually, Cardassian vole to poorly formed attempt at a humanoid -- Odo would shapeshift according to instruction (or risk electric shock) while Dr Mora droned on.

 

“Of course, the Cardassians don’t have soulmarks at all and thus regard this as superstitious nonsense, another aspect of Bajoran inferiority.  In that way, you’re lucky to be here, in their lab; the hypothesis of your soul, if you have one, isn’t  _ assumed  _ to be null from the outset.”

 

Until one day, alone in the secured room while Dr Mora was away, Odo finally managed an appropriate humanoid shape.  He had gone through a number of tries before that -- mimicking Dr Mora’s Bajoran nose, or his Cardassian lab assistant’s ridges -- but that’s all they were: mimicry.  Poor simulacrum of someone else.  This shape, though, that he found himself in -- smooth in places, saggy and textured in others, but on the whole indistinguishable from the wide variety of alien humanoids attending the Cardassian expos Odo was occasionally forced to perform at -- wasn’t exactly like any individual he’d met before.  

 

Instead, it felt like someone that could be him, Odo Ital.

 

Like a tunic tailored to fit just right, Dr Mora might say, Odo found this shape suited him.  It felt right.   The Unknown Sample finally grew legs of his own.

 

What surprised Odo more, however, were the words that appeared on his forearm, without his intention.

 

The question, written in a common Kardasi dialect on the outside of his tunic sleeve, only spawned more questions in Odo.

 

Why would anyone assume that Odo, experiment 437, would have money?  To the Cardassians, he was a joke, a party trick, a novelty.  Perhaps a weapon if they had their way, but never a debtor.  More basically, how did the words appear there, and why now?  Would it go away when he dissolved back into his bucket for the evening?  If it only appeared now, in this form, did it still count?  If this was truly a soulmark, did that mean Odo had a soul?   

 

The question that lingered, however, long after Odo became free of the lab, free of scientists telling him what to do and controlling his life, was less metaphysical.  After years of being reminded that he owed his life and wellbeing to Dr Mora -- Dr Mora who discovered that the sample gathering dust was so much more, Dr Mora who protected Odo from worse fates at the hands of the Cardassians, who helped him discover his potential, albeit amidst so much pain -- after years of Odo being told he owed himself to others, who would assume that  _ they _ owed  _ Odo _ something instead?

 

Odo kept the soulmark a secret, something of his own that Dr Mora need never know.  He learned how to cover it in his humanoid form, by shifting a separate arm underneath the sleeve, but by this point it had left its mark on Odo’s heart, cold and empty as it supposedly was.

 

Somewhere out there, Odo had always hoped, was a place he belonged, a home and a family.  

 

And now, maybe just  _ maybe _ , somewhere out there was someone who --

 

No, no.

 

As Dr Mora was all too quick to remind him, day after day, no matter what form Odo took he still wasn’t humanoid.  He didn’t eat or breathe or sleep… Or love.

 

He was above such frivolous humanoid concerns.  

 

And besides, who would want him around?

 

\----------

 

When Odo and Quark finally met it was anti-climatic, as far as romances were concerned.  

 

Both had long since given up on this fated interaction; and even if they hadn’t, they certainly wouldn’t have expected to meet someone like each other.  

 

Quark for one, since arriving on Terok Nor, had long gotten over his naive wishful thinking by this time.  

 

He was still embroiled in various schemes and plans for profit, sure, but he had found that hopes of love were just as suspect and unprofitable as he has always been warned.  For one sweet delicious month, Quark had prayed, dreamed, and ultimately denied that his soulmate was the illustrious Natima Lang.  Sure, her first words to him hadn’t been  _ exactly _ was what on his arm, but memory was a fickle thing and the lovely swoop of her neck had half-convinced himself that they were.  Or close enough, anyway.  He never could bring himself to mention this delusion to her though -- maybe she was his soulmate, but he couldn’t know if he was hers, what with Cardassians not having marks, and anyway he’d been too afraid of her laughing it off.

 

Not that it mattered in the end.  One evening, after what Quark had thought would have been a trivial fight, soulmate or not Natima walked out of his life.  His one great love -- gone forever, like the stream of latinum from the bar’s safe into his debtor’s pockets.  

 

Odo, on the other hand, had been preoccupied with extricating himself from life under the overbearing thumb of the science center.  He had been somewhat adrift afterwards, devoted to studying the nature of humanoids around him in a vain attempt to put it in some sort of discernible order.  Which is, of course, how he eventually found himself on Terok Nor, investigating a murder, asking after the bar owner for a lead.

 

“I’m looking for the proprietor of this establishment,” the blank-faced stranger said, strolling into Quark’s bar one evening.

 

Once upon a time, this sentence would have set Quark’s heart racing, but this wasn’t even the first time he’d heard some variation of that  _ today _ .  The novelty had worn off soon after starting the business, and Quark had abandoned ever hoping to match up his soulmark words with his soulmate.  Everyone was always looking for the proprietor, with the reasons for that only  _ some _ times being his fault and rarely for good news, so Quark had quickly learned not to be forthcoming with the answer to that particular request.

 

“Does he owe you money?” the creature said in response to Odo, his grin belying that he knew more than he would say upfront.

 

Odo hesitated a moment, barely perceptible.  He recognized the words as the same as his sometimes-soulmark.  Of course he did, with his impeccable memory -- but from that odd greasy man behind the bar, of all people?  Sizing him up, Odo assessed that he was most likely a criminal, or at the very least an agent of unspeakably  _ humanoid _ chaos.  

 

Not someone Odo could see himself consorting with on a personal basis, at least not  _ willingly _ .

 

After various misleading questions, Quark then offered Odo an array of humanoid pleasures, as if Odo were one of them.  Reminding Odo of all the ways he wasn’t.  Even worse, what Quark did next was: insinuate himself in bribery, possibly implicate himself in abetting the murder, mock Odo’s neck trick, and lie -- repeatedly and not very well -- straight through his pointy disgusting teeth.  All in all, not very impressive as far as meetings with supposed “soulmates” go.  

 

Must be a mistake.

 

To Quark, Odo was taciturn, blunt to the point of rudeness, and clearly  _ no fun at all _ .  He didn’t play along with Quark’s jokes, seemed to lack subtlety or nuance, and in their interaction didn’t smile once.  He also didn’t drink, didn’t eat or gamble, and didn’t have any apparent interest in sex.  All he cared about was justice, solving that murder case.  Boring.

 

So in many ways, no this wasn’t a typical love-at-first sight, Prophet-blessed romance that soulmate meetings were supposed to be.  It was barely even tolerable.

 

Except that, well, neither had met anyone like the other before.

 

Odo wasn’t afraid of anyone, not even Dukat.  He didn’t play games, never said one thing but meant another, and instead stuck to his straightforward, clearly defined path of justice and order.  Quite unlike the Cardassians Quark had found himself surrounded by these days.  

 

Life at the mercy of Dukat’s whim was unpredictable, and for a proper cowardly Ferengi utterly  _ terrifying _ .  So perhaps it would be nice to have someone around that wasn’t.  

 

Someone Quark could count on.

 

And Odo couldn’t help but notice how Quark, for all his bluster, had seemed so small as Odo had lifted him up by the lapels across the bar.  So vulnerable, for all that bombastic audacity otherwise puffing him up.

 

Even while Odo kept his responses terse and aloof, during their interaction Quark never stopped smiling.  That veneer of jocularity Quark attempted to maintain, even when it shifted to nervousness upon Dukat’s arrival, was to Odo both foreign and fascinating.  Even after Odo threatened his livelihood and called out his bullshit, Quark never stopped trying to make a personal connection with Odo.  Like Odo was worth knowing.  Worth making happy and cared for, even if it was for a price, an implicit promise of security.

 

So, really, it wasn’t the first words to each other that were all that important after all.  It was how that conversation ended:

 

“Listen, I feel you and I, we've gotten off to a bad start here. Let me make it up to you. You need anything?”  Quark had said to Odo, half in jest, but by now Odo could tell how or when Quark was lying.  “Maybe companionship?”

 

Their soulmates weren’t anything like either of them expected, and it would be years until they realized that’s what they were to each other.  But in the end, it didn’t matter.  

 

They found each other all the same.


End file.
